How far in a small boat

[Seajet]

Dan,

maybe I'm mistaken but I thought Jumbleduck's and all 490's are lift keelers ?

Anyway put your hand in your pocket - doesn't need to be that deep nowadays - and get yourself an Anderson !

 

[lw395]

Going a 'long way' in a small boat is often not much different from being in a larger boat. I've done Lyme Bay in a 19ft boat and would cross the channel in one. It just takes 40% longer or something.
The real bonus of a bigger boat is spending time aboard but not sailing.
With a very small boat, you tend to need to get ashore more, you eat ashore more and that costs, which adds up on trips longer than a weekend.
Sensibly, you plan to suit the boat you have. But almost everything people do in the majority of their 30-35ft boats, you could reasonably do in a good 18ft cruiser if you really wanted to.

Where really small boats mostly fail is motoring, not sailing. Which influences planning of course.

 

[doug748]

.......
Where really small boats mostly fail is motoring, not sailing. Which influences planning of course.

I agree with much of what you say, people probably sail smaller boats more. It's easier to set sail and, as you point out, motoring is not their strong suit.
With large boats the ability to make 9kts, silently into the wind, is sometimes difficult to ignore.

 

[scruff]

if I wasn't so wary of keeping the Osprey upright in a breeze, I'd already have been cruising primitively, far and wide for years.

To put this in different terms, the pure pound cost of keeping your Osprey is low and likely measured in low triple figures (I'm guessing) however the lost opportunity cost has actually been high - by your own admission, you've missed out on years of doing the sailing you really want to be doing. How much is a day of your life worth? how much is a year worth...? I dare say I don't need to point out you cant get years of your life back...

If I were in your shoes, I would look to mothball the Osprey for a season, (next season, not the one after) and go buy a boat more suitable for the sailing you want to do. If it's cruising you can get a Centaur for very little - just see what that chap Dylan Winter has done. It also dries upright... if not a centaur, there is a plethora of small sailing boats which would be cheap and potentially suitable, but pick a common, well known & well regarded marque.

Sail this boat for the season, and see if the sailing you *think* you want to do is actually for you. If it's not and you don't feel you get the value out of the increased expenditure, sell the new boat (why I suggested the centaur - they are a known entity and I dare say easy to move on). You still have the osprey to fall back on.

If you then decide that the new boat is for you and you get value out of the new increased cost of the new boat, sell the osprey. I dare say you would sell it easily too - it looks in fine condition.

 

[Daydream believer]

Dan,

maybe I'm mistaken but I thought Jumbleduck's and all 490's are lift keelers ?

Anyway put your hand in your pocket - doesn't need to be that deep nowadays - and get yourself an Anderson !

I will probably regret this :ambivalence:

But I actually agree with Andy --Sorry folks -- but he is right (for once):ambivalence:
Dan keeps trolling & dreaming about a small cruiser & one can appreciate that finances are always tight. But whilst he is at it a decent Anderson 22 should not actually have any expense required to keep it running ( unlike, say a Centaur etc) & sails brilliantly. It will go into shallow water - although I think that creek crawling is really a myth that people talk about but never really do except for mooring etc.
Just bite the bullet & get one. The Osprey will soon be forgotten, & the feeling when on a broad reach in a F5-6 will be unforgettable.
However, you are going to have to fork out a bit more than Andy might suggest (has he suggested a typical price yet?) because there is no point skimping on the purchase price to find that you then have to blow hundreds on a new outboard etc.

 

[Praxinoscope]

I have always admired the Anderson 22 and would certainly agree with Seajet and look seriously at an Anderson.

 

[JumbleDuck]

That's one reason I'm thinking small is best. Although I've just seen a drop-keel version of the Hunter 490, for sale, £900. There really is a boat out there for everyone.

They all have drop keels! The problem with drying out upright is the big cast iron thing on the bottom of the keel. Anyway, a certain amount of discomfort when dried out is worth it for the sailing. She's still on my driveway, no reasonable offer refused ...

 

[Daydream believer]

I think that if one can sail a small boat then one can certainly sail a much larger one with ease.
When I sailed round Britain I met quite a few single handed sailors like me but they were , in the main, in boats that were 22 ft or in some cases less. A few went up to 24 ft.
One chap said to me that he admired the fact that I could handle a 31 ft boat single handed. I pointed out that infact I was in awe of him. I think that he had to be a far more skilled sailor than I was

I had 12 weeks to circumnavigate & so did 6 legs of over 100 miles, the longest being St Peter Port to Falmouth ( I went via the Channel Islands). The chap( he was typical of quite a few I met) in his 22 ft boat had to coast hop 20-40 miles at a time. He had to very carefully watch the tides & weather in case he got caught out. He had to enter drying harbours & time the entry times or wait offshore & calculate the depths very carefully. He had to stay fairly close inshore & navigate with greater accuracy than me. His outboard was a bit unreliable & would not drive the boat well in a choppy sea as the prop would often cavitate. As a result he had to sail longer in some awkward situations. He was far more uncomfortable during the trips & often arrived exhausted. When in port, his cooking, sleeping & washing arrangements were all a bit utilitarian. A shower like mine would have been considered luxury. His circumnavigation was going to take 2 years.
Fair enough, he would see more of the coast; but I am not sure that I would have wanted to. 12 weeks was enough & I was satisfied.

It was the same for most of the small boat sailors. I assume that they all did finally sail round the Uk ( I hope that they did) but had to work very hard. So whilst it is OK to say that some have sailed 60+ miles in 17 ft boats it is not average & certainly not comfortable & in most cases not always the most enjoyable of experiences.
That is my take on it anyway

 

[lw395]

I think that if one can sail a small boat then one can certainly sail a much larger one with ease.
When I sailed round Britain I met quite a few single handed sailors like me but they were , in the main, in boats that were 22 ft or in some cases less. ......

Singlehanded is a whole different can of worms.
A 22ft boat generally needs a crew of 3 or 4 to race efficiently. So carrying two or three to cruise is not unreasonable, at least when you're underway.
Two people can go along way in a small boat.

Singlehanding brings in a lot of restrictions, limitations, complications which make life different from having someone to stand a watch or even just take the helm for ten minutes.
The exact limitations of being singlehanded may affect you differently in a bigger or smaller boat, but it's at least useful to identify what's all about the boat, and what's all about being singlehanded.
I won't hesitate to head for Cherbourg on a Friday night after a day at work, two up on a 29ft boat. It takes longer than in the 42ft boat, but that's not really a problem when we can each get a sensible amount of kip on the way over. It will still be beer o'clock when we get there.
Single handed, I'm not really keen to go further than is comfortable without sleep, whatever the boat. I'm just not driven to do it. Not wanting to sleep or be deprived of sleep doesn't just reduce the range, it largely shapes thing into day/evening sails.

 

[BrianH]

In the 1960s I had a copy of a Hilbre Island OD of just over 19ft (6m). A copy only because a Whitby boat-builder, who shall remain nameless, bought the plans and licence for one, which he built and sold. He was asked for another and built it with carvel planking where the original was clinker, to avoid the single construction agreement. Then he was asked for another, which he supplied and I bought that from the first owner for a very cheap price.

It was a lovely little boat with a 12mm steel centreplate dropping through an iron keel and was my first step up from a Wayfarer and an earlier Snipe class - I loved her. She was easy to moor on a drying mooring on the Esk river and I competed against the other two (one genuine, one another carvel copy) in the club races.

But I wished for longer races and cruises, for which she was unsuitable with her short, low doghouse and was still basically an open boat with foredeck and cuddy. Consequently, one winter, I and a friend laboured to give her a real cabin with lightweight canvas bunks, which, with a new mast and masthead rig, transformed her. I then participated in the longer NE races and cruised as far as Holy Island in Northumberland.

But I was more ambitious and when the chance to buy a YW Buccaneer came up I did so. The Buccaneer was the winner of a Yachting World competition in the 1950s for a DIY project, won by Ricus van de Stadt. Mine was a professionally-built one with slightly more beam and wood-faired lead keel. She was still a small ship at 23ft (7m) and just over a tonne displacement. I called her Chinook in memory of my days in Winnipeg when in Spring, the warm westerly chinook wind brought relief from a long winter of sub-zero temperatures.

I entered Chinook in the first foreign race of the North East Cruiser Racing Association (NECRA) in 1972, from Hartlepool to IJmuiden in Holland, a more than 200nm race with the first mark being the Texel light vessel. Tacking interminably against the light south-easterly winds that we experienced that year we came last in the fleet (being the smallest), taking four days for what was almost 50% above that of the straight-line distance. Returning from Den Helder a week later, we had very different weather and spent 17 hours galebound in the middle of the North Sea lying a-hull. That experience convinced me that a small, strongly-built and well-found vessel, given enough sea-room, can survive as well as larger craft, they are just more uncomfortable with the extreme motion.

 

[Mark-1]

Singlehanding brings in a lot of restrictions, limitations, complications which make life different from having someone to stand a watch or even just take the helm for ten minutes.
The exact limitations of being singlehanded may affect you differently in a bigger or smaller boat, but it's at least useful to identify what's all about the boat, and what's all about being singlehanded.
I won't hesitate to head for Cherbourg on a Friday night after a day at work, two up on a 29ft boat. It takes longer than in the 42ft boat, but that's not really a problem when we can each get a sensible amount of kip on the way over. It will still be beer o'clock when we get there.
Single handed, I'm not really keen to go further than is comfortable without sleep, whatever the boat. I'm just not driven to do it. Not wanting to sleep or be deprived of sleep doesn't just reduce the range, it largely shapes thing into day/evening sails.

This is a really good point and one I hadn't really thought about. I've complained above about the restrictions of my boat due to lack of effective engine & speed, but in reality to a large degree those restrictions are actually due to single handing. Instead of doing an hour and a half on a Friday night I could plough on miles 'till midnight with a decent powernap on route. Overnighters using all the fair tides is a lot easier if you're two up. A long sail doesn't seem so long if you get 3 hours sleep in the middle and there's someone to chat to. Is my boat a poor eater of distance, or is the ships company just more keen on his bed than putting the miles in.

...but I love having the boat to myself. Yet another sailing compromise, and one I didn't fully appreciate I was making.

 

[ProDave]

Another "small boat" thing. Small boats tend to be more likely to have a small OB and small OB's tend to only have internal tanks. So if you end up motoring a long way you have to keep refilling the tank, which is best done with the motor stopped.

A slightly larger OB with a remote tank largely solves that problem, but of course the bigger boats are more likely to have an inboard diesel engine with a large tank so can just plod on without intervention.

 

[dancrane]

...maybe I'm mistaken but I thought Jumbleduck's and all 490's are lift keelers?

They all have drop keels!

Quite right, thank you gentlemen, I don't know what I was thinking of...it was very late.

...your Osprey...the lost opportunity cost has actually been high - by your own admission, you've missed years of the sailing you really want to be doing...go buy a boat more suitable for the sailing you want...If you don't feel you get the value out of the increased expenditure, sell the new boat...You still have the Osprey to fall back on.

Thanks Scruff, that's very wise. I knew it myself, many fine days this year...I couldn't be bothered to launch! I don't often get as much out of the dinghy as I put in. I don't want to sell her, but for more whole days (and nights) of sailing per season, I need a cruiser too. I've known it for decades. I nearly bought an Achilles 24 in May, till I totted up all the extras I'd need to buy, to get her home.

I have always admired the Anderson 22 and would certainly agree with Seajet and look seriously at an Anderson.

...a decent Anderson 22 should not actually have any expense required to keep it running (unlike, say a Centaur etc)...

...I also looked into an Anderson 22, before the Achilles. Very tempting, and I may yet be persuaded, thank you...although...

The chap in his 22 ft boat had to coast hop 20-40 miles at a time...had to very carefully watch the tides & weather...had to stay fairly close inshore...his outboard would not drive the boat well as the prop would cavitate...he was far more uncomfortable & often arrived exhausted. Fair enough, he would see more of the coast; but I am not sure I would have wanted to.

...hmm, having said I that I should, now you're really making me think I shouldn't! :biggrin-new:

But, that poor slow, weary, sleepless, unwashed chap must still have been far more comfortable than the average dinghy-cruiser.

It's a sad reflection on our sailing, if possibly the greatest benefit of a big yacht is the availability of powerful, reliable auxiliary.

 

[weustace]

I must agree in part with Daydream/Seajet—small boats do not like going to windward under power and they are cramped inside. The Achilles 24 is especially cramped inside, and my example is powered with a 4hp outboard in a well, with external fuel tank and extra fuel carried for longer trips in cans. Poole-Alderney in flat water was a noisy trip but a fast one at 5 knots or so; on this trip, we cruised for a week with three people, a tent, two amateur radio stations and a load of other gubbins, so even in a notoriously cramped boat it's surprising what you can squeeze in... By contrast, having made an error in sailing slowly for too long in the Alderney Race on the way from Cherbourg-Guernsey later in the season, we applied full power and made 2-3 knots into a tedious short chop for about three hours. It was not a pleasant afternoon! The First 40.7 I also sail has a (30hp?) Volvo below the steps and is much faster under power—also one doesn't have to pull the cord to start it, which is perhaps as well. The flip side? I can (and do) take my engine home a few times a year to service in the garden shed, and I sometimes carry a similar spare, which I was given for free, under the companionway—if the first one packs up irreparably, there's 4 more horses just raring to go.

It is also true that, on old small boats at least, you are simply more exposed; on the 40.7 one can sail to windward in F5 without getting wet. This is not so in the Achilles, and I suspect is also not the case in most similarly sized boats. You also feel the trade-off between accommodation and looks/performance more at the smaller end of the market: many boats are available with comparatively palatial accommodation, but I find them an eyesore. Another sufferer of this aesthetic eye was my erstwhile neighbour, in a 22' Corribee—he lived aboard for a year, in what one had to admit was a beautiful boat, and, on visiting me once, spoke longingly about how enormous our cabin was!

I am afraid you are quite right—even if kept on a drying mooring, in which case access is a bit trying, the costs of even a small yacht are drastically more than those of a dinghy, but equally the horizons developed are significant. Luck may also reduce the expense: since purchase in 2015, most big-ticket purchases could have been avoided—the only replacements of a broken part, per se, were the jib furler, for which one can write off probably £500, a sizeable fraction of the purchase price, and the VHF, which could be picked up quite cheaply second hand.

More generally, re the earlier point on single handing—I have no autopilot or self-steering, and would not have made half the passages I made this summer with neither those nor a crew. If provided with self-steering so one can go below and eat/warm up, it is doubtless possible to run further, but I favour crewed sailing from my experience to date! Here lies one joy of a proper large boat, like the aforementioned 40'er: at the end of the day, in an anchorage, one serves out dinner from the big pot, and eight people can sit round the saloon table in relative comfort to share a dram of Scotch...still, "Three Men in a Boat" became famous with a smaller compliment, and I greatly enjoyed one 12 day trip this summer with just one friend as crew.

 

[Seajet]

The Anderson 22 has a comfy interior and powers to windward very well; may not be the closest pointing at 45 degrees, but punches through waves inc ' Solent Chop ' - when we beat a Rival 34 to windward in quite severely snotty conditions, the Rival owner - ex National 12 Champion so no slouch - said " I had a Hurley 22, it would have stopped dead in those conditions ".

He also greeted me for ever afterwards with

" I Hate that boat ! "

 

[Mark-1]

The flip side?

Agree - this thread is aimed at the distance covering capacity of small boats, which is to some degree a drawback. If we had a thread about the many advantages of small boats it would be far longer!

 

[{151760}]

Dan Crane: for goodness' sake buy yourself a small yacht. Any of the ones mentioned will be good. If it proves too expensive after a season sell it or give it away! You don't want to die wondering!

 

[steve yates]

Dan,I don't know where your based, but if your anywhere near the east coast/essex, which your creek crawling ambitions suggest is a possibility, I have an interim solution for you.

I need to fettle the trailer, but am then going to bring bethfran, my bradwell 18 down to a pontoon on leigh on sea. She will be living there for the forseeable future from feb onwards. Buy me a beer or two in the crooked billet and I'll give you a key for her, you can take her off cruising whenever you like, as long as you like, if I am not using her. So she will be available an awful lot more than not, as I have a big boat to fettle and a shit load to do at work on two businesses.

You can actually see what it's like cruising on a small boat for a season. I'm not precious if you ding her, she has a few already and couldn't get much scruffier She has a good mariner 5hp outboard to get you back if required, and she floats in 40cm of water, so you can creek crawl to your hearts content.
I have no problems with you taking her somewhere and leaving her there to bring her back again at a later date either, as long as I know where.

Get in touch if that would be of any use.

 

[dancrane]

That is an extremely kind offer Steve, I'm tempted to jump at it, partly to discover the waters of the East Coast, which are more than 100 miles from home for me. I really do appreciate the kind thought - and the down-to-earth practicality of it. :encouragement:

However, since I have a marina eight minutes' walk from home, Storm Norm (and Scruff before him, and others in this thread, plus countless more over, ahem, some considerable period before that )...you're all exactly right...I must stop wondering aloud about "which one", and just get my own.

EDIT:

Actually Steve, I've just properly read your post on the first page of this thread, with Google Maps to help me take stock of it...

...you did that distance? In those remote places, at the end of the season, with minimal experience...in that old 18ft boat?

I think that's the answer to the question in this thread - going far can be done in an 18ft boat, if the skipper is equal to it.

There's an old phrase to the effect that the boat can take more than her crew...I must keep that in mind. Steve Yates bought a tiny yacht and sailed right round north-west Scotland and back, while all I did in the same time was not hoist my dinghy's spinnaker. :hopeless:

 

[JumbleDuck]

...you did that distance? In those remote places, at the end of the season, with minimal experience...in that old 18ft boat?

The man is a legend. And also good company.